SUBINTERFACE CRACK IN DISSIMILAR ORTHOTROPIC MATERIALS

A subinterface crack in dissimilar orthotropic materials is considered . The principal axes of one of the materials (say material no. 2 which contains the crack) are aligned along the coordinate axes while the o ther material's principal axes (say material no. 1) can have an arbitr ary angle gamma relative to the interface boundary. The effects of mat erial no. 1 on the behavior of material no. 2 are completely through s ix generalized Dundurs' constants that are functions of gamma. When ga mma = 0 or when the material constant delta((1)) of material no. 1 is equal to one, two of the six constants vanish and only four left have to be considered. A peculiar phenomenon is observed for delta((1)) = 1 , i.e. when the material constant delta((1)) of material no. 1 is equa l to one the effect of the alignments of material no. 1 on the behavio r of material no. 2 is indifferent. Several features of the stress int ensity factors for crack faces subjected to self-equilibrating loading s are further investigated without resorting to solving the equations. Some numerical results for crack faces subjected to uniform pressure or shear loadings are also given.